December 14

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• 1799, George Washington, died at his Mount Vernon, Virginia., home at age 67

• 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole, beating out an expedition led by Robert F. Scott

• 1939, the Soviet Union was dropped from the League of Nations

• 1945, Josef Kramer, ym"sh, known as "the beast of Belsen," and 10 others were hanged in Hameln for crimes committed at the Belsen and Auschwitz Nazi concentration camps

• 1946, the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish U.N. headquarters in New York

• 1962, the U.S. space probe Mariner 2 approached Venus, transmitting information about the planet

• 1967, first time DNA created in a test tube

• 1975, six South Moluccan extremists surrendered after holding 23 hostages for 12 days on a train near the Dutch town of Beilen

• 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, which it won in a defensive war against Syria in 1967

• 1986, the experimental aircraft Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California on the first nonstop, non-refueled flight around the world

• 1988, America agreed to talk to PLO (the first time in 13 years)

• 1990, Right to Die case permits Nancy Cruzan to have her feeding tube removed; she dies 12 days later

• 1995, Presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia signed the Bosnian peace treaty in Paris. ALSO: AIDS patient Jeff Getty received the first-ever bone-marrow transplant from a baboon (however, the experimental procedure at a San Francisco hospital was criticized by animal rights activists. The transplant failed, but Getty survived)

• 2000, President-elect George W. Bush conferred by phone with congressional leaders of both parties and planned a goodwill tour of Washington, D.C.; he also received a flood of congratulatory calls from world leaders on his first full day as president-elect. ALSO: U.S. businessman Edward Pope was pardoned and released by Russia after being convicted of espionage. The Federal Trade Commission unanimously approved the $111 billion merger of America Online and Time Warner.

• 2006, a British police inquiry concluded that the deaths of Princess Diana and her boyfriend in a 1997 Paris car crash were a "tragic accident" and that allegations of murder were unfounded